at Mr.
Parmlee might not have a railroad in his pocket, but that at least he
didn't have to wait for the Flood to call on young ladies, nor did he
usually come in pairs, for all the world as if he had been let out of
Noah's Ark, but on horseback and like a Christian by the front door.
All this provokingly and bewitchingly delivered, however, and with a
simulated exaggeration that was incited apparently more by Mr. Lawrence
Grant's evident enjoyment of it, than by any desire to defend the absent
Parmlee.

"But where is the front door?" asked Grant laughingly.

The young girl pointed to a narrow zigzag path that ran up the bank
beside the house until it stopped at a small picketed gate on the level
of the road and store.

"But I should think it would be easier to have a door and private
passage through the store," said Grant.

"WE don't," said the young lady pertly, "we have nothing to do with the
store. I go in to see paw sometimes when he's shutting up and there's
nobody there, but Clem has never set foot in it since we came. It's bad
enough to have it and the lazy loafers that hang around it as near to
us as they are; but paw built the house in such a fashion that we ain't
troubled by their noise, and we might be t'other side of the creek as
far as our having to come across them. And because paw has to sell pork
and flour, we haven't any call to go there and watch him do it."

The two men glanced at each other. This reserve and fastidiousness were
something rare in a pioneer community. Harkutt's manners certainly did
not indicate that he was troubled by this sensitiveness; it must have
been some individual temperament of his daughters. Stephen felt his
respect increase for the goddess-like Clementina; Mr. Lawrence Grant
looked at Miss Phemie with a critical smile.

"But you must be very limited in your company," he said; "or is Mr.
Parmlee not a customer of your father's?"

"As Mr. Parmlee does not come to us through the store, and don't talk
trade to me, we don't know," responded Phemie saucily.

"But have you no lady acquaintances--neighbors--who also avoid the store
and enter only at the straight and narrow gate up there?" continued
Grant mischievously, regardless of the uneasy, half-reproachful glances
of Rice.

But Phemie, triumphantly oblivious of any satire, answered promptly:
"If you mean the Pike County Billingses who live on the turnpike road as
much as they do off it, or the six daughters of that